Philanthropist Agnes Gund dies at 87

KENT—Agnes Gund, who purchased a 252-acre estate in South Kent in 1996, has died at the age of 87. 

Gund was president emerita of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and a leading art collector and philanthropist dedicated to social justice.

Gund joined the museum’s international council in 1967, its board of trustees in 1976, and was board president from 1991 to 2002. She oversaw 2004’s $858 million expansion. 

Gund served on various non-profits’ boards, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Council on Arts, the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, and was a life trustee at the Morgan Library and Museum.

She was chairman of the Mayor’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission of New York City and served on the boards of Chess in the Schools, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Frick Collection, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Socrates Sculpture Park. 

In 1997, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton, the highest honor given to artists and arts patrons by the U.S. government, and received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2005. She also received numerous honorary degrees and distinctions recognizing her contributions and philanthropic work.

Gund’s family encouraged an interest in the arts but, early on, she did not eagerly embrace it. The second of six children born to wealthy businessman George Gund II and Jessica (Roesler) Gund, she was taken regularly to cultural events and art museums. 

“It wasn’t that I didn’t think too much of it, but I was used to it and didn’t realize it was special,” she confessed to this writer in a 2011 interview. “I just thought the arts are available to you as a child and you grow up like that. I wasn’t such a fan of being taken here and there, but now I am an advocate of doing that.”

Her appreciation of art was further fostered when, after her mother’s death in 1954, she attended Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn. There, Sarah MacLennan, “magical art history teacher,” taught her how to look at art. At the same time, she visited her aunt in New York City on weekends, touring the city’s museums. 

“Now my family has traditions that include going to ballet and theater from the earliest time.” she said in 2011. “When my children were young it was ‘Do we have to go to another museum?’ but eventually, they understood they were privileged.”

Because early exposure builds an appreciation for and love of the arts, she advocated for keeping admission fees for museums low or free and expressed her appreciation for the Cleveland Museum, where she took classes as a child. She donated her first major acquisition, Henry Moore’s sculpture, “Three-Way Piece No. 2, to the museum in 1970, five works by contemporary American artists in 2017, as well as other artworks.

In addition to her gifts to the Cleveland Museum, she made major gifts during her lifetime to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the MoMA, which received more than 250 artworks. The majority of Gund’s collection is promised to museums.

Gund got a degree in history from the Connecticut College for Women. Later in life she went back to school, earning a master’s in art history at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge in 1980. So keen did her own appreciation of fine art become that her homes were graced by works by the likes of Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Mark Rothko, and Frank Stella.

As a collector, she championed contemporary art, encouraging MoMA to expand its holdings in that area. Her interests did not end at museum doors, however. To boost art for children from working class families, Gund initiated Studio in a School in 1977, bringing professional artists into school and community organizations to lead classes in drawing, printmaking, painting, and sculpting. 

The program began in response to the economic crisis of the mid-1970s, when New York City virtually eliminated arts education in the public schools and has since expanded its reach nationwide through its parent organization, the Studio in A School Association.

A self-proclaimed feminist and prominent Democratic donor, she was known for supporting artists of color and women artists. 

In 2022, she sold Lichtenstein’s Mirror #5 for $3.18 million to benefit the work of two nonprofits fighting for reproductive rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Her organization, Art for Justice Fund, made a matching donation. Using the proceeds of another $150 million sale of Lichtenstein from her collection, she established the five-year fund dedicated to criminal justice reform that is managed by the Ford Foundation, 

In 2019, she co-chaired a charity auction for Miss Porter’s School with Oprah Winfrey. Titled “By Women, for Tomorrow’s Women,” the sale raised $3.9 million, led by Gund’s donation of “Blanco y Verde” by Carmen Herrera, which brought in $2.9 million.

Prescient about the mood of the country, she predicted in 2011 that the arts would be an area where Congress would seek to effect economies. “They will cut from the people who really need the things they are asking for,” she observed then. “They are already attacking parts of health care, and they are getting the wrong parts. I feel the arts benefit people enormously, especially in time of war and stress and cutting back.”

She foresaw a looming culture war and noted the increasingly conservative mien of the country, referring to the imbroglio then surrounding a four-minute video clip by David Wojnarowicz included in the Smithsonian’s show, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” in the National Portrait Gallery. 

It was the first major museum show to explore same-sex intimacy, but what excited the controversy, was a video depicting a Crucifix with ants crawling over it. Some interpreted the image as being anti-Christian. 

The video segment was removed after criticism from Capitol Hill and because the Smithsonian called the issue “a distraction” from the meaning of the exhibit. But, she observed, it would have been more accurate to say Smithsonian officials were worried about their bottom line because Congress controls 70 percent of the Smithsonian’s budget.

A few days after a story written by conservative Web site CNSnews.com reporter Penny Starr appeared, House and Senate leaders were asked if they thought the show in the federally funded museum should be pulled. 

Only days later, Catholic League president Bill Donohue questioned on National Public Radio why the Smithsonian receives federal funding at all. He was quoted as saying, “Why should the working class pay for the leisure of the elite when, in fact, one of the things the working class likes to do for leisure is to go to professional wrestling? If I suggested we should have federal funds for professional wrestling to lower the cost of the ticket, people would think I’m insane. I don’t go to museums any more than many Americans do.”

Fourteen years ago, Gund predicted what would happen. “I suppose there will be efforts to cut NCA funding because of what happened at the Smithsonian,” she said, “but I am hoping they have other things on their list that they want to do that will keep this somewhat at bay.”

She said the statement that the working classes are not interested in the arts is patently untrue. “To say that all they want to see is wrestling is offensive and not accurate,” she said then.

The Smithsonian started 2025 frozen at 2024’s $1.09 billion spending level, 4.7 percent less than 2023. In March, an executive order was signed aimed at preventing federal funds from being used for exhibits or programs considered to be inconsistent with federal policy and future cuts could result in reduced public access.

But with a president in office who has deep connections with the world of professional wrestling, the White House is scheduled to host a full Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on the South Lawn in June 2026. UFC CEO Dana White confirmed the plan in August 2025, after meeting with President Donald Trump.

Gund enjoyed her life in Kent. In 2011, she and her family used the property for holiday gatherings. “We do use it a lot for that and are very fond of it,” she said then. “Kent is just big enough—not like the Hamptons—and we like being there and not having to do fancy things. It’s beautifully serene up there.”

Twice married and twice divorced, to Albrecht Saalfield and Daniel Shapiro, Gund is survived by her children, Catherine Gund, David, Anna and Jessica Saalfield, 12 grandchildren, and her siblings Gordon, Geoffrey and Louise Gund.